A big congratulations to Uta Franke, a member of our scientific advisory board and our former senior medical director, appearing on the cover of the American Journal of Human Genetics.
A medical doctor and professor emerita of Genetics and Pediatrics at Stanford University, Uta joined 23andMe first as a consultant in 2007. She became our senior medical director in 2010 serving in that post for three years.
In 2012 Uta received the William Allan Award from the AJHG for her groundbreaking work in genetics. It was one in a long string of awards in her career particularly focusing on human genetic diseases.
Uta is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She’s also a founding member of the American College of Medical Genetics and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Her work has included making new findings into such genetic diseases as Charcot-Marie-Tooth, Marfan, Rett, Prader-Willi, Williams, and Wiskott-Aldrich syndromes. Her work opened new avenues for the study and treatment of these disorders. She served as president of the ASHG in 1999, pushing for a more open-access model for scientific publications.
Her presidential address to the group at that time was titled “Human Genetics in the Information Age.”
